she asked, crouching in near darkness beside the door. They were in a small sitting room of some sort, with a couple of shadowed chairs and a small table.
“Yeah,” Gawx said. “I memorized the palace maps before we came. You didn’t?”
She shrugged.
“I’ve been in here once before,” Gawx said. “I watched the Prime sleeping.”
“You what?”
“He’s public,” Gawx said, “belongs to everyone. You can enter a lottery to come look at him sleeping. They rotate people through every hour.”
“What? On a special day or something?”
“No, every day. You can watch him eat too, or watch him perform his daily rituals. If he loses a hair or cuts off a nail, you might be able to keep it as a relic.”
“Sounds creepy.”
“A little.”
“Which way to his rooms?” Lift asked.
“That way,” Gawx said, pointing left down the hallway outside—the opposite direction from the vizier chambers. “You don’t want to go there, Lift. That’s where the viziers and everyone important will be reviewing applications. In the Prime’s presence.”
“But he’s dead.”
“The new Prime.”
“He ain’t been chosen yet!”
“Well, it’s kind of strange,” Gawx said. By the dim light of the cracked door, she could see him blushing, as if he knew how starvin’ odd this all was. “There’s never not a Prime. We just don’t know who he is yet. I mean, he’s alive, and he’s already Prime—right now. We’re just catching up. So, those are his quarters, and the scions and viziers want to be in his presence while they decide who he is. Even if the person they decide upon isn’t in the room.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Of course it makes sense,” Gawx said. “It’s government. This is all very well detailed in the codes and . . .” He trailed off as Lift yawned. Azish could be real boring. At least he could take a hint, though.
“Anyway,” Gawx continued, “everyone outside in the gardens is hoping to be called in for a personal interview. It might not come to that, though. The scions can’t be Prime, as they’re too busy visiting and blessing villages around the kingdom—but a vizier can, and they tend to have the best applications. Usually, one of their number is chosen.”
“The Prime’s quarters,” Lift said. “That’s the direction the food went.”
“What is it with you and food?”
“I’m going to eat their dinner,” she said, soft but intense.
Gawx blinked, startled. “You’re . . . what?”
“I’m gonna eat their food,” she said. “Rich folk have the best food.”
“But . . . there might be spheres in the vizier quarters. . . .”
“Eh,” she said. “I’d just spend ’em on food.”
Stealing regular stuff was no fun. She wanted a real challenge. Over the last two years, she’d picked the most difficult places to enter. Then she’d snuck in.
And eaten their dinners.
“Come on,” she said, moving out of the doorway, then turned left toward the Prime’s chambers.
“You really are crazy,” Gawx whispered.
“Nah. Just bored.”
He looked the other way. “I’m going for the vizier quarters.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “I’d go back upstairs instead, if I were you. You aren’t practiced enough for this kind of thing. You leave me, you’re probably going to get into trouble.”
He fidgeted, then slipped off in the direction of the vizier quarters. Lift rolled her eyes.
“Why did you even come with them?” Wyndle asked, creeping out of the room. “Why not just sneak in on your own?”
“Tigzikk found out about this whole election thing,” she said. “He told me tonight was a good night for sneaking. I owed it to him. Besides, I wanted to be here in case he got into trouble. I might need to help.”
“Why bother?”
Why indeed? “Someone has to care,” she said, starting down the hallway. “Too few people care, these days.”
“You say this while coming in to rob people.”
“Sure. Ain’t gonna hurt them.”
“You have an odd sense of morality, mistress.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Every sense of morality is odd.”
“I suppose.”
“Particularly to a Voidbringer.”
“I’m not—”
She grinned and hurried her pace toward the Prime’s quarters. She knew she’d found those when she glanced down a side hallway and spotted guards at the end. Yup. That door was so nice, it had to belong to an emperor. Only super-rich folk built fancy doors. You needed money coming out your ears before you spent it on a door.
Guards were a problem. Lift knelt down, peeking around the corner. The hallway leading to the emperor’s rooms was narrow, like an alleyway. Smart. Hard to sneak down something like that. And those two guards, they weren’t the bored type. They